The present invention relates to consumer-accessible cash redemption machines and methods for handling receipts or vouchers issued by such machines, but not immediately redeemed by customers. Such transactions may be subject to state laws concerning unclaimed property.
In this type of machine, cash is placed in an intake mechanism, such as a hopper, and is directed to collection receptacles while providing the user with merchandise, a voucher, a receipt or a form of credit, on a memory card, for example.
Whenever a financial or retail business holds unclaimed property such as account balances, official checks, money orders, or gift certificates, and the like, it is required by state laws to return the property to the rightful owner if that is possible. With some value-based media, redeemable for cash, the owner is not known. Such is the case with transaction receipts issued by self-service coin equipment. Transaction receipts that are not redeemed (or are “dormant”) after a period of time are can be designated as “abandoned” and become the property of the State under laws generally called unclaimed property laws in a process generally referred to as “escheatment.” Regulations and time periods vary by state, but all institutions should have a method of identifying these unredeemed receipts and of tracking them for long periods of time when these transactions fall within the parameters defining unclaimed property. Financial or retail businesses that are subject to state laws on unclaimed property have the right to charge reasonable fees to maintain and track the unclaimed property, in this case, the transaction receipt. After time periods specified by state law, called the dormancy period, those unclaimed funds must be turned over to the state, minus any fees assessed, and earmarked for public use. This reversion of unclaimed property is sometimes referred to as “escheatment.”
None of the known self-service coin machines in the U.S have hardware or software components to address the need to identify and track those unredeemed receipt transactions, leaving that function to be addressed by the financial or retail businesses. These separate processes are generally both costly and labor-intensive.
Others have addressed the problems of unclaimed property in other contexts; see for example, Griffin, U.S. Pat. No. 7,258,273; McDonald, U.S. Pat. No. 7,054,833; Berger U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2005/0071177 and Hertz et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2002/0156780.